Music
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On Site Opera Premiers Milhaud
Guilty Mother at The Garage
By: - Jun 23rd, 2017Kenneth Cole has created a huge space for events, gatherings, parties, and yes, operas. Located far west in Mid Manhattan, On Site Opera chose it for their American premier production of Darius Milhaud's The Guilty Mother.
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OperaRox Concludes NY Opera Fest
New Works at National Opera Center
By: - Jun 25th, 2017OperaRox, a passionate and persuasive group that is promoting new compositions for the human voice, presented the final program in the New York Opera Fest 2017. Clearly this is not the last word for opera.
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Boston Early Music Festival in Venice
19th Biennial Festival's Two Operas and 18 Concerts
By: - Jun 25th, 2017The early music world comes to Boston every two years for the BEMF. This year its centerpiece opera was Andre Campra's "Le Carnaval de Venise," an opera-ballet, in its American premiere. It also reprised a hilarious pair of intermezzi, one of them the popular "La serva padrona," by Giovanni Pergolesi and Handel's Roman period oratorio "La Resurrezione." A good time was had by all.
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Francisco Nunez and Young Concert Singers
Bringing La Systema to Carnegie Hall
By: - Jun 27th, 2017Building new audiences can be natural if you can get young people to sing, prepare them for concert performance and invite their families to attend. Francisco Nunes, the composer and conductor, does this with his Young People's Choir. They were joined by like groups from other cities to perform music created for them. The evening was a smash hit.
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Wilco Headlines Solid Sound Festival
Fifth Mega Event Sold Out at MoCA
By: - Jun 30th, 2017Wilco headlined the fifth Solid Sound festival, a sell out, at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The band played for two evenings and Jeff tweedy returned on Sunday to play with his son, Spencer, and special friends of the band.
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Ragtime at Barrington Stage Company
Timely Revival of Issues Based Musical
By: - Jun 30th, 2017Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield has a reputation for mounting an annual blockbuster revival of a vintage musical. It also has an an agenda to present message plays that inspire and inform audiences. In the era of Trump Barrington is presenting Ragtime which seemingly conflates the mandates for entertainment and education. It results in a long evening top heavy with big ideas, multiple characters and confusing subplots.
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Boz Scaggs at Tanglewood
Paired with Michael McDonald
By: - Jul 01st, 2017Last night rocker Boz Scaggs launched the 2017 popular artists series at Tanglewood. It was a soggy evening in Lenox with some hearty souls huddled under umbrellas on the lawn. The former lead singer of the Steve Miller Band performed a stunning and soulful set of old and new material including highlights with superhits "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle." Former Steely Dan pianist and vocalist, Michael McDonald, opened with a 90 minute set.
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BEMF's Global Early Music Performers
Performers from Italy and France to Slovakia and Mexico
By: - Jul 03rd, 2017With its own produced concerts and 18 sponsored groups, the BEMF programs music from 9:30 a.m. to midnight, which only the most intrepid music lovers can attend. Your reporter made it to nine, including both operas, in seven days. With the theme of "carnival," there was a lot of outside-the-law music, including some salacious texts, to consider.
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Natalie Merchant Collection at Tanglewood
The Ten CD Set To Be Released On July 17th
By: - Jul 05th, 2017After leaving 10,000 Maniacs in 1993, her solo career debuted with her first album, Tigerlily, in 1995. Since then, Natalie Merchants hasn't turned back and is due to release a 10 record set on July 17th, a feat few artists achieve.
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Guys and Dolls at Stratford Festival
Actors Sing and Dance Up a Storm
By: - Jul 07th, 2017It seems that almost everyone has a show-stopping song. And the action constantly moves to a change of place and tone and feeling. When, after we’ve been variously entertained by several couples, at least five major contenders for the star role, and much clowning, one of the big, oafish, slangy gangsters, stands up in church and sings a confessional song that brings the house down.
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James Taylor's Fireworks At Tanglewood
Packed House Cheers Bonnie Raitt
By: - Jul 07th, 201718,500 guests visit Tanglewood on July 4th to pay their yearly homage to the Berkshires' best known musician, James Taylor. Bonnie Raitt joined him during the holiday celebration.
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Sylvia Stoner and Noah Palmer in Bennington
Discussing Their Upcoming Gig
By: - Jul 06th, 2017The Bennington Center for the Arts, in partnership with the Summer Sonatina International Piano Camp, presents soprano, Sylvia Stoner and pianist, Noah Palmer as the fourth concert guests in the summer music series, performing on Friday, July 14th.
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Opening Night of Tanglewood Season
Nelsons Conducts Mahler's Symphony No. 2
By: - Jul 08th, 2017For Nelsons and the BSO the performance of Gustav Mahler's sublime, mystical, poetic and powerful Symphony No. 2 in C Minor proved to be physically and emotionally exhausting.
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Carmen Clicks at Prelude to Performance
Martina Arroyo Brings Emerging Talent on Stage
By: - Jul 09th, 2017Martina Arroyo, spinto soprano supreme, has committed a foundation in her name to the production of operas in which young talent, on the cups of careers, are given a chance to perform. At the Danny Kaye Theater in New York, George Bizet's Carmen was as fresh and compelling as any recent performance of this delicious warhorse.
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Sondheim on Sondheim
A Magical Evening at Tanglewood
By: - Jul 10th, 2017Sondheim on Sondheim presents a multi-media scrapbook on the life and work of Broadway's genius, Stephen Sondheim. A unique personal glance at not only Sondheim's life, but his creation of Broadway musicals. This evening provides insight into Sondheim's process and the life experiences that influenced his work. The eight vocalists, including four Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows, deliver Sondheim's music with feeling and vocal power.
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Evoking Ella Fitzgerald
Tanglewood Celebrates 100th Birthday
By: - Jul 11th, 2017Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was among yhe foremost jazz singers of her generation. In Ozawa Hall a centennial celebration was organized by arranger, Lee Musiker in collaboration with classical singers Stephanie Blythe and Dawn Upshaw. Together they are mentoring vocal fellows who comprised most of the program.
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Jazz in the Berkshires
Celebrating Four Centennials
By: - Jul 11th, 2017In our coverage of the Ella Fitzgerald at Tanglewood we commented on the decline of jazz programming. While Tanglewood has cut back drastically, Ed Bride, the director of Jazz Pittsfield in a letter reminded me other programming with centennials this year for Ella, Buddy Rich, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.
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William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch with Live Score
When Typewriters Talk
By: - Jul 13th, 2017Naked Lunch is never going to be a mainstream film, but the opportunity to peer into the twisty subconscious of the creative mind and the keen brilliance of a jazzman the caliber of Ornette Coleman was a perfect coming together of two seemingly opposed forces. And no Interzone insectoid typewriter would argue with that.
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The Knights At Ozawa Hall
Vijay Iyer's Trouble Debuts
By: - Jul 14th, 20172017 marks the 4th appearance of the popular Chamber Music group, The Knights, at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall. With over 40 band members, based in Brooklyn, the popular group presented a varied show of classics and music with modern scores.
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Another Palm Canyon Theatre Hit
Tony Winner Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights
By: - Jul 15th, 2017“In the Heights” by Lin Manuel Miranda chronicles the daily struggles of the neighborhood in its day to day existence of raising families, paying the rent and trying to keep one’s business from going bankrupt, along with the age-old frustration of the younger residents in not being able to make their own choices in their searches for love, romance, and marriage.
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Andris Nelsons Conducts at Tanglewood
Stunning Debut by Pianist Daniil Trifonov
By: - Jul 15th, 2017A light drizzle evoked soft programming and attendance for the Friday night peformance of Andris Nelson's conducting at Tanglewood. Perhaps there was a conservation of energy for tonight's historic two and a half hour performance of Wagner without an intermission. But history was made last night as well with the astonishing debut of pianist Daniil Trifonov performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K. 467. As they say, the crowd went wild.
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The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga
By Min Kahng in Palo Alto
By: - Jul 20th, 2017The bouncy, Vaudeville-influenced opening number "The Four Immigrants" theme sets the early tone of the hope for success in the new land. The men struggle, as most immigrants will, but then the first major setback occurs, San Francisco's 1906 earthquake.
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Rossini Mass at Caramoor
Rachelle Jonck Conducts Bel Canto Young Artists
By: - Jul 24th, 2017Rossini stopped writing operas at the age of 37. He did not compose again for decades. When he was able to move back to Paris, and build a country home in Passy with his second wife, he took up his composer’s pen again. To the end of his life, he composed over 200 works which he gave the umbrella title Sins of Old Age. He was touching up the Petite Messe Solennelle when he died in 1868.
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Christian Marclay Performs Calder
Small Sphere, Heavy Sphere at the Whitney
By: - Jul 24th, 2017Small Sphere, Large Sphere was Alexander Calder's first mobile construction. Hanging in the center of the Hess Theater at the Whitney Museum in New York, it is set in motion, not only to delight the eye, but the ear as well. Christian Marclay makes music with the small wooded sphere carved by Calder.
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Celebrating Thelonious Monk's Centennial
Concert wth Ted Rosenthal in Lee August 12
By: - Jul 29th, 2017Berkshires Jazz, Inc. continues its summer of centennial tributes on Aug. 12 with the Ted Rosenthal Quintet, in a 100th birthday salute to Thelonious Monk. TD Bank is sponsoring the concert, which takes place at the Lee Meeting House (Congregational Church), starting at 7:30pm.
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